Review: ‘The Flyer’

Predictable plotting and weak perfs let down South African-Swedish big-top story with a thud in "The Flyer." First-time helmer Revel Fox, a former trapeze-artist, gracefully captures aerial gymnastics, but that won't be enough to make this fly in the distribution fair beyond the Cape of Good Hope, except as a kids' pic on ancillary.

Predictable plotting and weak perfs let down South African-Swedish big-top story with a thud in “The Flyer.” First-time helmer Revel Fox, a former trapeze-artist, gracefully captures aerial gymnastics, but that won’t be enough to make this fly in the distribution fair beyond the Cape of Good Hope, except as a kids’ pic on ancillary. Fashionability of S.A.-cinema may ensure further fest bookings.

Mixed-race street urchin Kier (natural actor Jarrid Geduld first as a child, then played by the much less expressive adult Ian van der Heyden) becomes an accomplished trapeze flyer under the tutelage of curmudgeonly owner Anders (Marcel van Heerden). But his gangster brother Spies (Marvin Pasqualie first, then Craig Palm), who went to jail to save Kier from the law, pressures him to return to a life of crime, forcing a no-brainer choice between flying or probably dying. Fox favors slo-mo to show impressive trapeze sequences by stunt people, but story bits in between drag, while thesps seem stunned by the trite dialogue. Lensing looks underlit in the interiors. Rest of the tech package is borderline.